I have a Honda with an obsolete "infotainment" system, but at least it has an Aux In next to a USB port that provides power, so I can plug in an $11 UGreen dongle and listen to whatever I feel like. If I cared there are some nice 7" 1080p screens for cheap in the Raspberry Pi space that could be shoehorned in and run at 12V. But I'd rather have no screen at all.

Funny thing is that UGreen pairs faster than any other bluetooth device I have and never doesn't work. For eleven bucks.

With the fickleness of Google and Apple there's no chance they'll even support the current CarPlay and Android Auto in 20 years. I like to keep my vehicles 15-30 years, depending on how well they handle rust.

Maybe Crutchfield will make bypass harnesses for these systems in ten years when absolutely nothing works but the screen and speakers are still useful.

We really should be looking for standards at that level, so the compute modules could be upgraded after the manufacturer abandons their platforms.

As Louis says, you shouldn't be a felon for disabling ads on your refrigerator that you never agreed to.

The cops had it. They SHOULD have looked at it because only a complete moron goes charging in with guns without doing what they can to verify that there even is a problem. They had the key to that right there in their hands. They could have looked at the picture and understood that there never was a gun there. They hassled that kid and even endangered him (since THEY had guns and had their fingers poised on the panic button so to speak). The greatest danger to the school at that moment was panicky unthinking armed cops.

And yes, the cops depend on trust. That's what keeps a whole neighborhood from saying "I didn't see nothing!" and slamming the door in their faces. That's what makes people give them a call when they know something relevant. The last thing the police need is whole neighborhoods assuming the person they're after is an innocent victim.

Buy a phone for phone things. Buy a car for car things.

Or do we need to extend Zawinski's Law to automobiles?

I will not buy a car that does not have Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. Car systems always suck, and they don't have all the apps/accounts/settings/cellular connection/data plan that my phone does.

Literally the only reason that any car manufacturer tries to force you to use their own system is to sell you subscriptions.

The data centers provide a more continuous load then residential or small business. More energy delivered over an installed line capacity, producing more revenue. The line capacity represents capital investment, which is now more efficiently utilized and paid for by that energy revenue.

Right. The way Biden gave members of his own family like one of his children or an inlaw important government jobs is absolutely disgusting and proof that... that... um, wait, when did Biden do that? I mean, no modern President would ever do such a disgusting thing would they? I mean, I thought it was well established back with Kennedy how wrong and corrupt that was... Though, I do seem to recall something about a recent President doing that... who could I be thinking of?

That's a pretty odd thing to say. Renewables receive considerably less in subsidies than either nuclear or fossil fuels. Some of these subsidies are direct and some of them are indirect. For example, sometimes consumers might say "I thought renewables were supposed to be cheaper, why is my power bill so high!" and the answer (aside from the fact that only part of the bill is for supply costs and often more of it is for delivery costs) is that they are still paying for failed nuclear projects and will be for decades. For oil, the hidden subsidies are often quite out in the open, just that the oil excuse is obfuscated. Modern wars, for example, often have quite a lot to do with fossil fuels. Also, often subsidies for energy efficiency goals are conflated with renewable energy subsidies. For example, many include subsidies for EVs or for heat pumps along with renewable energy subsidies. While the hope with those subsidies is that the electricity produced will come from renewables, those are technically source neutral as far as the electricity goes.

Well, at least you're willing to admit that the level will go down. Of course, you seem to only be willing to attribute it to replacement of coal burning with natural gas burning, while completely ignoring the contribution of renewables. Let's be real here, however, and look at the last ten years. Currently, renewables are about 60% of the electricity mix of Germany, with nuclear negligible if any at all and fossil fuels very slightly below 40%. Over the last ten years, renewables have grown a little over 31% from their level ten years ago. In the meantime, fossil fuels have gone from over 50% to about 20%. While you are not incorrect that the fossil fuel mix is going to shift from being dominated by coal (currently lignite and hard coal are about 60% of fossil fuel use with lignite heavily dominating the coal mix now from 10 years ago when it was more of a 60/40 split for coal) to probably being dominated by natural gas, which will also reduce the CO2 per kWh, the actual proportion of fossil fuel usage in electricity generation is also on a downward trend. Even if the growth in renewables were only linear, they would still end up reaching 79% of generation.

So that would leave less than 20% of the pie (there's an "other category in the data I'm looking at that I assume is mostly trash burning) for fossil fuels and, as you pointed out, that percentage would also produce less CO2 (and other pollutants) proportionally as well from the shift to natural gas. So, even just with linear growth of renewables, the amount of fossil fuels used for electricity generation would be cut in half. Since natural gas simply produces less CO2 from burning, plus that the newer natural gas plants use more efficient combined cycle systems, the CO2 emitted by the natural gas portion would be about 50% of the coal portion. So, basically we take that 60/40 coal to natural gas split and say it becomes a 20/80 coal/natural gas split over ten years and the actual total between them is also cut in half by 50%. That would mean that the CO2 from fossil fuels would drop to about 38% of what it is now. There's that other category I mentioned earlier that is probably mostly trash burning, and that presumably produces CO2 at around the same level of coal. It is a fairly consistent 4%. Incidentally, that 4% seems like one of the reasons your numbers for France seem artificially low since France also burns garbage for power because it only makes sense to generate electricity from it if you are just going to burn it, and their proportion should not be significantly different from that in Gernany, but if it is, it should produce more CO2 than the numbers you keep using. Anyway, 38% of 60% is 22.8% and we'll tack on the estimated 6.7% from the other category for 29.5%. So, based on your numbers, that would bring the CO2 per kWh of electricity down to about 83.5 grams of CO2 per kWh in ten years.

Of course, all of that is based on the naive assumption that the growth in renewables is linear. All of the actual data shows it as closer to exponential or at least a j-shaped curve. That suggests that, in ten years, rather than simply increasing to around 79%, renewables would grow to something like 140% of power generation. That, of course is unlikely because 140% is clearly more power generation than needed. Not to mention that "other" category. For the time being, trash burning is not going away (it might be made carbon neutral through some form of carbon capture, which would require extra electricity beyond what it generates, of course). The point is though, that it is quite capable of displacing fossil fuel usage for electricity generation almost entirely. There are, of course, areas where it will not replace fossil fuels for electricity generation and that is for the off-grid and specialized areas that are covered in part by oil still being a tiny sliver of the fossil fuel electricity production. That mostly means generators. So either emergency generators or remote sites that use oil, natural gas, or maybe even coal for power. Of course, once again, those categories exist in France too, so I am wondering why those are not making it through to the CO2 per kWh numbers that you're using? There's also politics and business influence to consider. There are going to be generating facilities that are kept around to "save jobs", or because they are relatively new and therefore leaders will apply the sunk cost fallacy, or because it will be claimed that it will preserve tax revenue, or they might not even really bother with the excuses and everyone will know that it is because they are taking bribes, but nothing will be done about it, etc. Then there might be some semi-legitimate cases where there is an industrial process that uses fossil fuels and it co-generates electricity from waste heat. The point is that there is no good reason that Germany can not match France's CO2 per kWh for electricity generation or get close enough for all practical purposes.

Then we also have to consider that CO2 production per kWh of electricity generated is not really the only consideration. You can crow all you like about France's lower CO2 per kWh of electricity produced all you want, but the reality is that France only produces around 30% less CO2 than Germany per capita. The reason for this is that electricity generation is only a fraction of overall primary power usage. The solution for that is, of course, electrification. That mainly means transportation sector and replacing heat used in residential, commercial, and industrial settings where possible with heat pumps. Aside from that, a general efficiency push for wasteful processes in those sectors. This narrow focus only on electricity production is problematic since it distracts from the big picture. It has clearly distracted you, for example, if the CO2 per kWh in Germany didn't change at all, but the majority of cars and trucks in Germany became BEVs and the majority of fossil fuel burning heating systems were changed to heat pumps, Germany would end up producing less CO2 per capita than France, even with no change in the CO2 per kWh. Likely though, you would still be here spouting off about that rather than looking at the big picture.

My employers recently signed up for a ChatGPT account and I've been seeing how it can help me.

I remain responsible for the big picture, for actually making apps that work on iOS and Android. I've found ChatGPT helpful for refining details. It saves sifting through years worth of Stack Overflow postings. It's a handy tool, but it won't replace me any time soon.

If you say "Chat GPT" in French it sounds like "chat j'ai pété" ("cat I farted"). I guess I need to get out more...

...laura

And of course the massive cost of training the AI that they'll be wanting to recoup.

Only in the sense that the possibility of an active shooter cannot be fully eliminated anywhere or any time. Might as well go door to door in the whole town expecting an active shooter. They had no report of shots fired, they had a report of a suspected gun on the campus. They had a picture of the kid holding a bag of doritos mis-identified as a gun.

The police cannot be effective if they are universally mis-trusted. Might as well disband at that point.

Let me ask this simple question then. What do you think the CO2 per kWh of electricity produced will be in Germany next year? In five years? In ten years? Let's see if you're at all capable of admitting that the numbers you keep touting are just a snapshot and actually thinking critically about this instead of being dogmatic.

There was no clerical review. The method offered for a ticket challenge is to request a court date. Which costs drivers time and money, a kind of penalty by itself. Some people just pay the ticket, since (as they advertise) the infraction doesn't go on your record. I just happen to know cops and how broken the court systems are. In a proper and just system, nobody should be able to get a charge dropped through unofficial channels.

Had there been a cursory human review, this would never have passed muster. But then the city would have to pay soneone's time to conduct it. Taxpayers work for free. Just like users beta test Microsoft products.

I fear a world where AI will be able to perform such important tasks with no oversite. Because the AI salesman said you could fire your staff.

They had the picture with them when they went to arrest the kid. There was no active threat. Even a glance at the photo would have revealed the truth. Then there's the bonus of not having yet another law abiding citizen one day instructing his children "Don't EVER trust the cops".

Apparently the best adjective to describe current police operations is "Keystone".

I am curious, do you know how many GW's that would be? I assume that "reactors" may actually mean plants that might have more than one reactor there. Still what would we expect there, if all were built? 3 GWe per each seems like it's probably an overestimate, so that would be 63 GWe. Not really all that much compared to our potential power demands. Also, all of this is just for electricity generation. If we really want to deal with emissions, we need to deal with Primary power and not just electrical generation. Going by eia.gov the US uses 93.6 Quadrillion BTUs or 27.4 trillion kWh per year in total primary power (power from all sources, including all fossil fuel use, all nuclear, all renewables, etc.). Of that, something like 9.4 trillion kWh goes to electrical generation (although only about 4.09 trillion kWh is used, this is partly due to line losses, but mostly due to inefficiencies of thermal plants). So, in other words, CO2 from electrical generation is only a fraction of CO2.

The actual primary power mix is 38% petroleum, 36% natural gas, 9% coal, 9% renewables, and 9% nuclear (note that actually adds up to 101% since some of those numbers are all rounded). The actual end uses are 37% transportation, 35% industrial, 15% residential, and 13% commercial. If you electrified everything, such as everything you can in the transportation sector going electric (obviously planes are still a bit of an issue), producing heat for various things in the industrial, commercial, and residential areas through more efficient methods like heat pumps where practical, and of course reduce electrical sector losses from thermal plant inefficiencies, you can get the primary power required down to about 70%, which is about 19.18 trillion kWh per year. That works out to continuous power of around 2.2 TeraWatts of electricity generated to effectively decarbonize.